1) African women believe that Western involvement only hurts their own efforts towards obtaining more rights Yale Journal of Public Health, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2004, “Cut Off.” http://www.yaleph.com/archive/vol1no2/story7.html
Outside Sudan and the other countries where it is practiced, female genital cutting has drawn the attention of women across the globe, many of whom have joined movements to abolish it. Aside from moral debate,a controversy surrounds whose role it is to speak out against FGC: is it a question for African women? For all Africans? All women? All people?
Most international assistance agencies have developed policies or programs to combat female genital cutting, and according to the WHO there is a "Western feminist tendency to see Female Genital Mutilation...as the gender oppression to end all oppressions." In a 1998 World Health Report, the WHO argued for complete eradication. Its resolution stated that "FGM is a deeply rooted, traditional practice. However, it is a form of violence against girls and women that has serious physical and psychological consequences which adversely affect health. Furthermore, it is a reflection of discrimination against women and girls." The WHO explains its intervention through its belief in universal human rights and its disapproval of the notion that cultural relativism justifies acts of sex-based violence. However, others have challenged the WHO's view. According to anthropologist Ellen Gruenbaum: "If these values are based on deeply held cultural values and traditions, can outsiders effectively challenge them without challenging the cultural integrity of the people who practice them?"
Many Sudanese women find the way in which Western women contribute to the anti-FGC movement to be offensive and counter-productive to their own efforts to eradicate the practice. They accuse Western women of failing to acknowledge the agency of African women by implying that they cannot speak for themselves. Also, Africans accuse Western women of sensationalizing FGC and in so doing creating a defensive reaction among practitioners who might otherwise be allies in the process of eradication.
Also, some African women feel betrayed by the single-minded focus on FGC exhibited by Western women as well as by some African scholars. While genital cutting has received significant attention around the world, other issues that significantly affect women's lives are ignored. Henry Louis Gates, the seminal scholar of African-American studies, wonders: "Is it, after all, unreasonable to be suspicious of Westerners who are exercised over female circumcision, but whose eyes glaze over when the same women are merely facing starvation?" Critics like Gates point out that action may seem misguided when it is based on sensationalism and ignores those needs which are greatest. As Ellen Gruenbaum articulates, "Instead of concern for the basic needs for Third World Women, like water supply, economic development, and peace, Western feminists are more concerned about veils, clitorises, and so on. What good is all this without our lives?"
Others resent what they see as Western cultural hypocrisy. Nahid Toubia, an Egyptian feminist, argues that "the thinking of an African woman who believes FGM is the fashionable thing to do to become a real woman is not so different from that of an American woman who has breast implants to feel more feminine." Women all over the world alter their physical appearances in a variety of ways, and yet FGC is uniquely characterized as barbaric and inhumane.
Feminism Frontline 2)USassumptions of FGC are demeaning to the women who undergo the practice
Rosemarie Skaing, 2005, MA Sociology from University of Ioaw, “Female Genital Mutilation,” p. 98-99.
Feminism Frontline 3) Seeing a Monolithic image of third world women destroys the unity needed for a cross-cultural feminist movement
Sunera Thobani (Assistant Professor at the Centre for Research in Women's Studies and Gender Relations at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on globalization, nation-building, citizenship, migration, race, and gender relations. Dr. Thobani is also past president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Canada's largest feminist organization. The first woman of color to serve in this position, Dr. Thobani's tenure was committed to making the politics of anti-racism central to the women's movement.” Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hypatia/v020/20.3thobani.html) 2005.
The publication of Chandra Talpade Mohanty's germinal essay, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," made her a much admired and respected scholar, deeply influencing the thinking of many feminists, including myself. The essay, which quickly became part of the Women's Studies canon, is reprinted in Mohanty's latest book, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity.In this book, Mohanty identifies three "problematic directions within U.S.-based feminisms." The first is the growing, largely class-based rift between activist feminism and university-based feminist theorizing, the latter being susceptible to careerism and a narrow professionalism. The second is the deepening of consumerist and corporatist values, fuelling a rise of "neo-liberal" and "free market" feminism, concerned only with "women's advancement up the corporate and nation-state ladder." Last is the "narrowing of feminist politics and theory," which she defines to be a result of the "critique of essentialist identity politics and the hegemony of postmodern skepticism about identity" (6). Mohanty argues the case for a materialist analysis that addresses issues of identity, agency, community, home, and nation within the context of the institutions of the global political economy. Divided into three sections, the book addresses the major themes that have consistently occupied Mohanty's writings: decolonizing feminism; demystifying capitalism; and reorienting feminism. [End Page 221] The first section of the book, "Decolonizing Feminism," is vintage Mohanty. Her critique of the textual strategies deployed by Western feminists in cross-cultural studies to construct a [the]monolithic image of third world women as always and everywhere victimized, unrelentingly oppressed by "their" patriarchal cultures, remains as pertinent today as when she first wrote her classic essay. The textual strategies she identified at that time included the assumption that the category of 'woman' is a discrete, unitary formation, constituted prior to women's entry into social relations and institutions, such as the family; and the uncritical use of descriptive generalizations and disjointed examples as "proof" of the universality of the oppression of women in all Third World societies. The result of such [in] flawed analytic and methodological approaches distort the understanding of the various types of agency of Third World women, particularly the forms of resistance they develop, and thwarts the potential for cross-cultural feminist alliances. Simultaneously, Western feminists constitute themselves as active agents of history—liberated, educated and free—through the object status they impose upon their downtrodden "sisters." Mohanty argues that the power exercised through such constructs is not unlike that exercised by other Western colonialist discourses. Unfortunately, the book does not carry this analysis forward to examine the current situation of Muslim women (in Muslim and non-Muslim societies) in the midst of the aggressively militarist empire-building of the U.S. regime in its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. The ubiquity of the image of Muslim women as desperately in need of rescue by the "West" reveals how strong are the current forces that antiracist feminists have to contend with in the United States as elsewhere.
Feminism Frontline 4) Global feminism is an impossibility- the capitalist structure; social economic and racial stratifications prevent Eryn Scott, 2002, Gender Studies Professor at Columbia, “Differences and Intesections Between Feminism.”
5) African women perceive western feminists and confrontational and empirically resist
Mary Nvangweso. September 2002, master degree in theology, “Salvific message and the Nandi ritual of female circumcision.” Feminism Frontline 6) The reason African women are subjugated, or viewed in a lowly matter, is because of Western policies like the plan.
Máire Ní Mhórdha, Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development
(MAAPD) Program, January 2007. “Female genital cutting: traditional practice or human rights violation? An exploration of interpretations of FGC and its implications for development in Africa.” http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:msVcbzcLhEkJ:rspas.anu.edu.au/maapd/papers/wp-07-01.pdf+mutilation+cutting+discourse&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us
This incident is a telling one, highlighting the maternalistic nature of the relationship
between colonizer and colonized. The history of British colonial rule in northern Sudan is
marked by conflicts over the practice: “policing women directly and indirectly through
kinsmen, chiefs and clerics…occupied centre stage in colonial legislative agendas”
(ibid.). Anne McClintock (1995) argues that women and men did not experience
imperialism in the same way, and that gender distinctions mattered in the confrontation
with colonialism. Within pre-colonial power hierarchies, women enjoyed significant leverage over ritual and the fact that women rather than men determined whether a girl was circumcised was very threatening to the British sense of gender order (Abusharaf, 2006). The British insertion of colonial authority figures within family and community networks thus served to remove power and control from women and actually reinforce male dominance in Sudanese society. Far from being a ‘civilizing’ or ‘liberating’ influence on women’s lives, these policies were enacted with the view of regulating their behaviour and restricting their freedoms:
In areas where women’s subordination was clear, the British did not interfere to
improve them, while in other situations where women shared equal status with
men, they lost this status under the pretext of civilisation. In this the colonial male
bourgeois mentality played an important role. Abusharaf (2000:157)
Veena Das (1997) asserts that by appropriating the bodies of women as objects on which the desires of nationalism can be inscribed, women become a microcosm of the nation.
From a colonialist standpoint, women’s power needed to be circumscribed and their
bodies governed, in order to inscribe colonial rule.
Thus it can be argued that current debates surrounding FGC inAfricamust be viewed within recent historical perspectives of colonizers and colonized. Lane and Rubinstine
(1996:37) argue that “where the residue…of colonial privilege may contribute to a Western intervenor’s expectation that her actions will be viewed as appropriate and authoritative, former colonial subjects may take precisely the opposite view”. It is clear that the necessity exists to take account of contemporary and historical relationships of power and privilege as essential first steps toward arriving at a sensitive and nuanced approach to the issue.
Feminism Frontline 7) Feminist framing of FGC excuses economic exploitation and detracts focus from other key issues
Rosmarie Skaine, Sociologist, MA from UNIowa, 2005, Female Genital Mutilation: Legal, Cultural & Medical Issues, page 96.
Boddy notes that in the Sudanese context of complete polarization of the sexes, the
procedure of FGC renders a girl marriageable, and that undergoing it is a “necessary
condition of becoming a woman”, arguing that women are not so much preventing their
own sexual pleasure, as “enhancing their femininity” (ibid.). ‘Circumcision’ is believed to endow women with a remarkable ability to exercise self-control and power, to display restraint over their sexuality. Self-mastery is seen as a virtue and controlled sexuality allows women to “drive hard bargains and have a say in household politics and decision- making processes” (Abusharaf, 2001:129). The act of ‘circumcision’ allows women to exercise power not only over their sexuality, but also over their spouses (ibid.). However controversial they may be in the West, it is nonetheless critical that notions of women using ‘circumcision’ as a form of gender identification, cultural transmission and power be considered in any analysis of the practice, in order to challenge the image of the circumcised woman as a subjugated victim of male dominance.
Feminism Frontline 9) The state’s construal of violence and selective intervention entrench the ideology of a woman’s “need for protection”
Spike V. Peteeson, 1992, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, “Gendered States: Feminist Visions of International Relations Theory, p. 46. [Bhattacharjee.
Feminism Frontline 10) The state is the largest organizer of patriarchy-eradication of FGC can’t solve
Spike V. Peteeson, 1992, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, “Gendered States: Feminist Visions of International Relations Theory, p. 45.
Feminism Frontline 11) Feminist discourse surrounding FGC is victimizing and oppressive
Karen Musalo, prof at Univ of Cali and Director of Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, Winter 2007, lexis. [Bhattacharjee]
Perspectives such as that of Hosken maintain that circumcised women can feel no pleasure – a view which may be due to notions of the clitoris as the ‘seat’ of sexual pleasure in a woman. This view fails to take into account the numerous testimonies from circumcised women that they achieve orgasm and have a fulfilling sex life (see
(Abusharaf, 2001). Melissa Parker (1995) argues that emotional Western responses to the perceived ‘death’ of a female’s sex life are grounded in modern Western notions of sexuality as intrinsic to self, and the requirement for particular kinds of sexual gratification for well-being, which are not universal. Such notions may seem “immoral, amoral or bizarre” to people in some non-Western societies (Parker, 1995: 520), and heated debates among Western feminists and researchers are often influenced by Euro- American discourses which have little or nothing to do with the study populations (ibid.). This “inbuilt colonialism ofFirst Worldfeminism towards the Third” (Spivak, 1981:184) makes little attempt to understand that what may be seen as oppressive in one culture, is not oppressive in another. Sudanese feminist Rogaia Abusharaf, analysing the work of Hosken and others finds that: African women are repeatedly painted as downtrodden, forlorn, helpless casualties of male dominance. Their confinement in antiquated customs and cultural practices is viewed as puissant testimony to their eternal vassalage to patriarchy and, consequently, of their subjugation within both the so-called “public” and “private” spheres. (Abusharaf, 2001:112) These representations stress a notion of patriarchy in which the African woman is seen as ‘Other’ to Western women, wholly subservient, passive and ‘voiceless’: someone whose sexual and reproductive potential is controlled by men and whose genitals are mutilated in silence and without protest (ibid.). Yet, in many parts of northernSudan, the ritual is considered a joyous occasion in a young girl’s life, and is accompanied by ceremonies and festivities celebrating the girl’s rite of passage into womanhood (Abusharaf, 2000). FGC is often mentioned in conjunction with other forms of ‘gender based violence’, which bear no relation to the cultures in which FGC is practiced. Examples
include: sati (widow-burning); dowry deaths; prenatal sex selection and female
infanticide, with the latter two practices grouped alongside FGC by the United Nations
Population Fund as “extreme manifestations of the low social value placed on girls”
(UNFPA, 2005). These classifications of FGC as “violence against women” (ibid.) exemplify the over-simplifying nature of many rights-based arguments, which pay little or no attention to the cultural context in which it takes place – including the fact that the practice is usually performed and maintained by women. Abusharaf (2001) concludes, Feminism Frontline
after two periods of fieldwork in the Douroshab community in northern Sudan, that women have considerable influence in their community, evident from the roles they play in family and community life, and that in the context of FGC, they wield a particular power, for they alone perform the operations. She contends that their authority should not be attributed to ‘false consciousness’, in which women perpetuate their own subjugation. On the contrary, in this context, circumcision is seen as “the machinery which liberates the female body from its masculine properties” and for the women she interviewed, it is a source of empowerment and strength (Abusharaf, 2001:123).
13) The state is the centralized agent of social control and defines masculinity as the condition to enter the public sphere
Spike V. Peterson, 1992, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, “Gendered States,” p 45-46. [Bhattacharjee]
Feminism Frontline 14) Patriarchy describes any power relations- not just male/female
Elizabeth Boyle, Professor of Sociology, Univ. of Minnesota, 2002, Female Genital Cutting.
15) FGC is only one manifestation of patriarchy-it’s not a cause-patriarchy will still exist in non-FGC communities Ellen Gruenbaum, Professor of anthropology at the University of California, 2001, the Female Circumcision Controversy.
Women constructing other women
Janice Boddy (1989), from her research among the Hofriyati of northern Sudan, presents
the main motivation for FGC as a way to create ‘gendered’ entities in the community. Children are raised genderless and it is not until boys and girls are circumcised that they can take on the societal understandings and responsibilities of their gender. Thus:
Among Hofriyati, women actively and ongoingly construct other women… from the body of man. By eliminating any vestiges of maleness, they constitute women as separate entities and distinct social people. (Boddy, 1989:58)
Yale Journal of Public Health, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2004, “Cut Off.” http://www.yaleph.com/archive/vol1no2/story7.html
Outside Sudan and the other countries where it is practiced, female genital cutting has drawn the attention of women across the globe, many of whom have joined movements to abolish it. Aside from moral debate, a controversy surrounds whose role it is to speak out against FGC: is it a question for African women? For all Africans? All women? All people?
Most international assistance agencies have developed policies or programs to combat female genital cutting, and according to the WHO there is a "Western feminist tendency to see Female Genital Mutilation...as the gender oppression to end all oppressions." In a 1998 World Health Report, the WHO argued for complete eradication. Its resolution stated that "FGM is a deeply rooted, traditional practice. However, it is a form of violence against girls and women that has serious physical and psychological consequences which adversely affect health. Furthermore, it is a reflection of discrimination against women and girls." The WHO explains its intervention through its belief in universal human rights and its disapproval of the notion that cultural relativism justifies acts of sex-based violence. However, others have challenged the WHO's view. According to anthropologist Ellen Gruenbaum: "If these values are based on deeply held cultural values and traditions, can outsiders effectively challenge them without challenging the cultural integrity of the people who practice them?"
Many Sudanese women find the way in which Western women contribute to the anti-FGC movement to be offensive and counter-productive to their own efforts to eradicate the practice. They accuse Western women of failing to acknowledge the agency of African women by implying that they cannot speak for themselves. Also, Africans accuse Western women of sensationalizing FGC and in so doing creating a defensive reaction among practitioners who might otherwise be allies in the process of eradication.
Also, some African women feel betrayed by the single-minded focus on FGC exhibited by Western women as well as by some African scholars. While genital cutting has received significant attention around the world, other issues that significantly affect women's lives are ignored. Henry Louis Gates, the seminal scholar of African-American studies, wonders: "Is it, after all, unreasonable to be suspicious of Westerners who are exercised over female circumcision, but whose eyes glaze over when the same women are merely facing starvation?" Critics like Gates point out that action may seem misguided when it is based on sensationalism and ignores those needs which are greatest. As Ellen Gruenbaum articulates, "Instead of concern for the basic needs for Third World Women, like water supply, economic development, and peace, Western feminists are more concerned about veils, clitorises, and so on. What good is all this without our lives?"
Others resent what they see as Western cultural hypocrisy. Nahid Toubia, an Egyptian feminist, argues that "the thinking of an African woman who believes FGM is the fashionable thing to do to become a real woman is not so different from that of an American woman who has breast implants to feel more feminine." Women all over the world alter their physical appearances in a variety of ways, and yet FGC is uniquely characterized as barbaric and inhumane.
Feminism Frontline
2) US assumptions of FGC are demeaning to the women who undergo the practice
Rosemarie Skaing, 2005, MA Sociology from University of Ioaw, “Female Genital Mutilation,” p. 98-99.
Feminism Frontline
3) Seeing a Monolithic image of third world women destroys the unity needed for a cross-cultural feminist movement
Sunera Thobani (Assistant Professor at the Centre for Research in Women's Studies and Gender Relations at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on globalization, nation-building, citizenship, migration, race, and gender relations. Dr. Thobani is also past president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Canada's largest feminist organization. The first woman of color to serve in this position, Dr. Thobani's tenure was committed to making the politics of anti-racism central to the women's movement.” Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hypatia/v020/20.3thobani.html) 2005.
The publication of Chandra Talpade Mohanty's germinal essay, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," made her a much admired and respected scholar, deeply influencing the thinking of many feminists, including myself. The essay, which quickly became part of the Women's Studies canon, is reprinted in Mohanty's latest book, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity.In this book, Mohanty identifies three "problematic directions within U.S.-based feminisms." The first is the growing, largely class-based rift between activist feminism and university-based feminist theorizing, the latter being susceptible to careerism and a narrow professionalism. The second is the deepening of consumerist and corporatist values, fuelling a rise of "neo-liberal" and "free market" feminism, concerned only with "women's advancement up the corporate and nation-state ladder." Last is the "narrowing of feminist politics and theory," which she defines to be a result of the "critique of essentialist identity politics and the hegemony of postmodern skepticism about identity" (6). Mohanty argues the case for a materialist analysis that addresses issues of identity, agency, community, home, and nation within the context of the institutions of the global political economy. Divided into three sections, the book addresses the major themes that have consistently occupied Mohanty's writings: decolonizing feminism; demystifying capitalism; and reorienting feminism. [End Page 221] The first section of the book, "Decolonizing Feminism," is vintage Mohanty. Her critique of the textual strategies deployed by Western feminists in cross-cultural studies to construct a [the]monolithic image of third world women as always and everywhere victimized, unrelentingly oppressed by "their" patriarchal cultures, remains as pertinent today as when she first wrote her classic essay. The textual strategies she identified at that time included the assumption that the category of 'woman' is a discrete, unitary formation, constituted prior to women's entry into social relations and institutions, such as the family; and the uncritical use of descriptive generalizations and disjointed examples as "proof" of the universality of the oppression of women in all Third World societies. The result of such [in] flawed analytic and methodological approaches distort the understanding of the various types of agency of Third World women, particularly the forms of resistance they develop, and thwarts the potential for cross-cultural feminist alliances. Simultaneously, Western feminists constitute themselves as active agents of history—liberated, educated and free—through the object status they impose upon their downtrodden "sisters." Mohanty argues that the power exercised through such constructs is not unlike that exercised by other Western colonialist discourses. Unfortunately, the book does not carry this analysis forward to examine the current situation of Muslim women (in Muslim and non-Muslim societies) in the midst of the aggressively militarist empire-building of the U.S. regime in its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. The ubiquity of the image of Muslim women as desperately in need of rescue by the "West" reveals how strong are the current forces that antiracist feminists have to contend with in the United States as elsewhere.
Feminism Frontline
4) Global feminism is an impossibility- the capitalist structure; social economic and racial stratifications prevent
5) African women perceive western feminists and confrontational and empirically resist
Feminism Frontline
6) The reason African women are subjugated, or viewed in a lowly matter, is because of Western policies like the plan.
Máire Ní Mhórdha, Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development
(MAAPD) Program, January 2007. “Female genital cutting: traditional practice or human rights violation? An exploration of interpretations of FGC and its implications for development in Africa.” http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:msVcbzcLhEkJ:rspas.anu.edu.au/maapd/papers/wp-07-01.pdf+mutilation+cutting+discourse&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us
This incident is a telling one, highlighting the maternalistic nature of the relationship
between colonizer and colonized. The history of British colonial rule in northern Sudan is
marked by conflicts over the practice: “policing women directly and indirectly through
kinsmen, chiefs and clerics…occupied centre stage in colonial legislative agendas”
(ibid.). Anne McClintock (1995) argues that women and men did not experience
imperialism in the same way, and that gender distinctions mattered in the confrontation
with colonialism. Within pre-colonial power hierarchies, women enjoyed significant
leverage over ritual and the fact that women rather than men determined whether a girl
was circumcised was very threatening to the British sense of gender order (Abusharaf,
2006). The British insertion of colonial authority figures within family and community
networks thus served to remove power and control from women and actually reinforce
male dominance in Sudanese society. Far from being a ‘civilizing’ or ‘liberating’
influence on women’s lives, these policies were enacted with the view of regulating their
behaviour and restricting their freedoms:
In areas where women’s subordination was clear, the British did not interfere to
improve them, while in other situations where women shared equal status with
men, they lost this status under the pretext of civilisation. In this the colonial male
bourgeois mentality played an important role. Abusharaf (2000:157)
Veena Das (1997) asserts that by appropriating the bodies of women as objects on which
the desires of nationalism can be inscribed, women become a microcosm of the nation.
From a colonialist standpoint, women’s power needed to be circumscribed and their
bodies governed, in order to inscribe colonial rule.
Thus it can be argued that current debates surrounding FGC in Africa must be viewed
within recent historical perspectives of colonizers and colonized. Lane and Rubinstine
(1996:37) argue that “where the residue…of colonial privilege may contribute to a
Western intervenor’s expectation that her actions will be viewed as appropriate and
authoritative, former colonial subjects may take precisely the opposite view”. It is clear
that the necessity exists to take account of contemporary and historical relationships of
power and privilege as essential first steps toward arriving at a sensitive and nuanced
approach to the issue.
Feminism Frontline
7) Feminist framing of FGC excuses economic exploitation and detracts focus from other key issues
Rosmarie Skaine, Sociologist, MA from UNIowa, 2005, Female Genital Mutilation: Legal, Cultural & Medical Issues, page 96.
Feminism Frontline
8) Women gain more power after going through FGC- the plan puts a stop to this
Máire Ní Mhórdha, Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development
(MAAPD) Program, January 2007. “Female genital cutting: traditional practice or human rights violation? An exploration of interpretations of FGC and its implications for development in Africa.” http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:msVcbzcLhEkJ:rspas.anu.edu.au/maapd/papers/wp-07-01.pdf+mutilation+cutting+discourse&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us
Boddy notes that in the Sudanese context of complete polarization of the sexes, the
procedure of FGC renders a girl marriageable, and that undergoing it is a “necessary
condition of becoming a woman”, arguing that women are not so much preventing their
own sexual pleasure, as “enhancing their femininity” (ibid.). ‘Circumcision’ is believed
to endow women with a remarkable ability to exercise self-control and power, to display
restraint over their sexuality. Self-mastery is seen as a virtue and controlled sexuality
allows women to “drive hard bargains and have a say in household politics and decision-
making processes” (Abusharaf, 2001:129). The act of ‘circumcision’ allows women to
exercise power not only over their sexuality, but also over their spouses (ibid.). However
controversial they may be in the West, it is nonetheless critical that notions of women
using ‘circumcision’ as a form of gender identification, cultural transmission and power
be considered in any analysis of the practice, in order to challenge the image of the
circumcised woman as a subjugated victim of male dominance.
Feminism Frontline
9) The state’s construal of violence and selective intervention entrench the ideology of a woman’s “need for protection”
Spike V. Peteeson, 1992, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, “Gendered States: Feminist Visions of International Relations Theory, p. 46. [Bhattacharjee.
Feminism Frontline
10) The state is the largest organizer of patriarchy-eradication of FGC can’t solve
Spike V. Peteeson, 1992, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, “Gendered States: Feminist Visions of International Relations Theory, p. 45.
Feminism Frontline
11) Feminist discourse surrounding FGC is victimizing and oppressive
Karen Musalo, prof at Univ of Cali and Director of Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, Winter 2007, lexis. [Bhattacharjee]
Feminism Frontline
12) Western nations enact policies like the plan with colonialist undertones, and fail to realize that FGC empowers women
Máire Ní Mhórdha, Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development
(MAAPD) Program, January 2007. “Female genital cutting: traditional practice or human rights violation? An exploration of interpretations of FGC and its implications for development in Africa.” http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:msVcbzcLhEkJ:rspas.anu.edu.au/maapd/papers/wp-07-01.pdf+mutilation+cutting+discourse&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us
Perspectives such as that of Hosken maintain that circumcised women can feel no
pleasure – a view which may be due to notions of the clitoris as the ‘seat’ of sexual
pleasure in a woman. This view fails to take into account the numerous testimonies from
circumcised women that they achieve orgasm and have a fulfilling sex life (see
(Abusharaf, 2001). Melissa Parker (1995) argues that emotional Western responses to the
perceived ‘death’ of a female’s sex life are grounded in modern Western notions of
sexuality as intrinsic to self, and the requirement for particular kinds of sexual
gratification for well-being, which are not universal. Such notions may seem “immoral,
amoral or bizarre” to people in some non-Western societies (Parker, 1995: 520), and
heated debates among Western feminists and researchers are often influenced by Euro-
American discourses which have little or nothing to do with the study populations (ibid.).
This “inbuilt colonialism of First World feminism towards the Third” (Spivak, 1981:184)
makes little attempt to understand that what may be seen as oppressive in one culture, is
not oppressive in another. Sudanese feminist Rogaia Abusharaf, analysing the work of
Hosken and others finds that:
African women are repeatedly painted as downtrodden, forlorn, helpless casualties of
male dominance. Their confinement in antiquated customs and cultural practices is
viewed as puissant testimony to their eternal vassalage to patriarchy and,
consequently, of their subjugation within both the so-called “public” and “private”
spheres. (Abusharaf, 2001:112)
These representations stress a notion of patriarchy in which the African woman is seen as
‘Other’ to Western women, wholly subservient, passive and ‘voiceless’: someone whose
sexual and reproductive potential is controlled by men and whose genitals are mutilated
in silence and without protest (ibid.). Yet, in many parts of northern Sudan, the ritual is
considered a joyous occasion in a young girl’s life, and is accompanied by ceremonies
and festivities celebrating the girl’s rite of passage into womanhood (Abusharaf, 2000).
FGC is often mentioned in conjunction with other forms of ‘gender based
violence’, which bear no relation to the cultures in which FGC is practiced. Examples
include: sati (widow-burning); dowry deaths; prenatal sex selection and female
infanticide, with the latter two practices grouped alongside FGC by the United Nations
Population Fund as “extreme manifestations of the low social value placed on girls”
(UNFPA, 2005). These classifications of FGC as “violence against women” (ibid.)
exemplify the over-simplifying nature of many rights-based arguments, which pay little
or no attention to the cultural context in which it takes place – including the fact that the
practice is usually performed and maintained by women. Abusharaf (2001) concludes,
Feminism Frontline
after two periods of fieldwork in the Douroshab community in northern Sudan, that
women have considerable influence in their community, evident from the roles they play
in family and community life, and that in the context of FGC, they wield a particular
power, for they alone perform the operations. She contends that their authority should not
be attributed to ‘false consciousness’, in which women perpetuate their own subjugation.
On the contrary, in this context, circumcision is seen as “the machinery which liberates
the female body from its masculine properties” and for the women she interviewed, it is a
source of empowerment and strength (Abusharaf, 2001:123).
13) The state is the centralized agent of social control and defines masculinity as the condition to enter the public sphere
Spike V. Peterson, 1992, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, “Gendered States,” p 45-46. [Bhattacharjee]
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14) Patriarchy describes any power relations- not just male/female
Elizabeth Boyle, Professor of Sociology, Univ. of Minnesota, 2002, Female Genital Cutting.
15) FGC is only one manifestation of patriarchy-it’s not a cause-patriarchy will still exist in non-FGC communities
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16) FGC is the only way African women can feel empowered and unique
Máire Ní Mhórdha, Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development
(MAAPD) Program, January 2007. “Female genital cutting: traditional practice or human rights violation? An exploration of interpretations of FGC and its implications for development in Africa.” http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:msVcbzcLhEkJ:rspas.anu.edu.au/maapd/papers/wp-07-01.pdf+mutilation+cutting+discourse&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us
Women constructing other women
Janice Boddy (1989), from her research among the Hofriyati of northern Sudan, presents
the main motivation for FGC as a way to create ‘gendered’ entities in the community.
Children are raised genderless and it is not until boys and girls are circumcised that they
can take on the societal understandings and responsibilities of their gender. Thus:
Among Hofriyati, women actively and ongoingly construct other women… from
the body of man. By eliminating any vestiges of maleness, they constitute women
as separate entities and distinct social people. (Boddy, 1989:58)